MPS to end Head Start programs, add preschool seats with federal funding in limbo

Milwaukee Public Schools administrators are closing the district's Head Start preschool programs , preparing for the potential loss of an estimated $10.5 million in federal funding because of safety problems at the sites .

Seventeen of the district's Head Start sites will be replaced with regular 3-year-old kindergarten programs, which officials say will offer a near-identical experience for those families — including transportation, breakfast and lunch.

The district's other 20 Head Start sites will be shuttered, with all families already enrolled in those programs being offered seats at K3 programs in other MPS schools. Staff are being offered other jobs in the district, MPS officials said.

MPS' regular preschool programs are not changing. The district offers K3 at 49 schools and K4 at 112 schools. Head Start is a federal program that provides grant funding to school districts and other operators for preschool programs for students from lower income families. MPS was planning to use that funding for programs at 37 schools.

MPS' Head Start funding was suspended in May because of unresolved safety concerns flagged by federal officials. MPS officials were hoping to find out in June whether the district would be awarded its next five-year grant for Head Start but had still not received a decision as of Wednesday.

MPS Chief Academic Officer Jennifer Mims-Howell said her team made the decision to move ahead with the transition away from Head Start now, despite still waiting on the federal decision, so that families can have firm plans for the upcoming school year. The district could explore reopening Head Start sites if it is awarded any federal funds.

Here's what to know about the changes to Head Start.

What were the problems at MPS Head Start programs?

Federal officials suspended Head Start funding for MPS in May because they found the district was failing to fix ongoing issues after there were incidents of maltreatment, physical abuse, verbal abuse and lack of supervision in the district's programs, records show.

The federal Administration for Children and Families notified MPS in a April 26 letter about problems it had uncovered, including two incidents where children were dropped off by buses and left outside unsupervised until they were discovered by staff.

The April letter also noted ACF had warned MPS about safety issues in its Head Start programs in January 2023, March 2023 and July 2023. In one incident last May, two 3-year-olds at Marvin Pratt School were reportedly left unsupervised on a fenced playground for 10 minutes. The ACF noted that MPS had not "remedied the issues," which included lack of supervision, failure to maintain required teacher/child ratios and child maltreatment.

Could MPS reopen its Head Start programs?

If MPS does receive Head Start funding, Mims-Howell said the district likely wouldn't convert its K3 programs back to Head Start sites but could consider reopening the closed sites and recruiting students for those sites.

If the district loses the grant, Mims-Howell said MPS will not be able to apply again until 2028, for the 2029-30 school year, because the grants are on a five-year cycle.

"We're going to make sure that the (K3) programs that we offer have proper professional development and also meet the standards of early childhood, so that if it be within five years Milwaukee Public Schools wants to reapply for the Head Start grant, we will be in a good position to do that," Mims-Howell said.

Does this mean MPS will lose students?

Mims-Howell said the district notified Head Start families Monday with letters and Tuesday with phone calls. She said the district's new K3 programs will have 500 seats, more than enough for the roughly 350 students she said were already enrolled in Head Start.

However, the district was planning to recruit a total of 1,200 students for its Head Start programs. While the district could still recruit additional students for its K3 programs at other schools, the loss of the Head Start programs could cause some families to look elsewhere. Many other organizations operate Head Start programs in Milwaukee.

What does this mean for the district's budget?

MPS was expecting to get about $10.5 million in Head Start funding for the next school year, according to the district's budget plan .

Instead, it will use its own operating funds to open an additional 25 K3 classrooms at 17 schools. Mims-Howell said the funding will come out of the district's Central Services budget, rather than coming out of individual schools' budgets.

Wisconsin doesn't provide school districts with funding for K3 students, so MPS has to pull from the funding it receives for other students in order to provide K3 programs, Mims-Howell said.

Mims-Howell, who didn't have an estimate of the cost of the new K3 classrooms, said the school board might need to accommodate the K3 programs by making other cuts to Central Services when it adjusts the budget for the school year this fall.

How did MPS choose which Head Start programs to convert to K3 and which to close?

Mims-Howell said administrators considered which sites already had more families enrolled, which schools already have K4 programs that K3 students will be able to transition into, and which sites had safety issues that federal officials had identified. She said about 40 to 50 students were enrolled at the sites that are closing without conversions to K3 programs.

Some school board members said administrators told them they were creating a plan to close the Head Start sites and start some K3 programs, but board members didn't see the list before administrators finalized it. The decision also wasn't brought to the district's Head Start Policy Council, said Erika Siemsen, the school board member appointed to serve on that council.

Siemsen said she understood why administrators moved ahead with a decision without approval from the school board or council, given the time sensitivity of the situation. Siemsen said administrators met with school board members in groups of two to discuss the need to prepare for closures, and she supported the plan to add K3 classrooms at some sites. Board members cannot meet privately about district matters in larger groups without violating open meeting laws.

"We have this obligation to our youngest learners, and it comes to a point where you can't wait any longer to see if you're going to have funding," Siemsen said. "We felt it was really critically important to meet the needs of our families, and if that meant just funding these programs on our own so those children had seats, that was more important than anything."

Board member Missy Zombor said she supported administrators "moving quickly so that families know they have a home sooner."

Board member Henry Leonard said he thought the board should have voted openly on the Head Start transition plan and provided an opportunity for public input on the sites selected for K3 programs. He said the loss of the Head Start programs is a major blow to the district and it's another indication, like the district's latent financial reporting issues , that board members and the public need to be more thoroughly informed and updated about problems in the district.

"This is something that can never happen again," Leonard said. "Our No. 1 responsibility is to take care of our babies. Accountability has to be in place, and communication has to be in place."

What MPS schools are losing Head Start programs?

The following MPS Head Start programs will be replaced with 3-year-old kindergarten classes. Families already enrolled in Head Start at these sites will automatically be enrolled in the kindergarten classes:

• Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes (ALBA)
• Allen-Field
• Bethune
• Browning
• Bruce
• Congress (two classrooms)
• Doerfler
• Forest Home (two classrooms)
• Grant Gordon (five classrooms)
• Hayes (two classrooms)
• Hawthorne
• Lincoln Avenue (two classrooms)
• Longfellow
• Lowell
• Manitoba
• Maple Tree
• Vieau

The following MPS Head Start programs will not be replaced with kindergarten classes. Families already enrolled in these programs should have been contacted this week by MPS Student Services to find another school:

• Auer Avenue
• Carson
• Franklin
• Holmes
• Jackson
• Kagel
• Kilbourn
• King Elementary
• Kluge
• LaFollette
• Metcalfe
• Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Language
• Mitchell, Obama
• Marvin Pratt
• Riverwest
• Sherman
• Siefert
• Thurston Woods
• Westside

Contact Rory Linnane at rory.linnane@jrn.com . Follow her on X (Twitter) at @RoryLinnane .

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: MPS to end Head Start programs, add preschool seats with federal funding in limbo